The New Sandwiches at Jetties, Washington, DC

My son-in-law, Michael Boyd, alerted me to the fact that Jetties has two new sandwiches on their menu, at least in the Chevy Chase DC and Foxhall Road locations. Michael added — this is the important part — both sandwiches are really good. As usual, Michael was right. You can take what he says to the bank.

The two sandwiches are a cheese steak —

and a pastrami with Muenster cheese and cole slaw.

I’m not a huge steak and cheese fan. The only one I ever really loved was at Brennan McAuliffe’s Curbed Hunger, a food truck in Loveland, Colorado. The Jetties cheese steak is not legendary, like McAuliffe’s, but it’s very good, far above average. The bun is toasted, and the meat is grilled — I mean with grill marks, not grease — and the meat is mixed with a beautifully melting cheese and grilled onions. It works. It really works, and it provides the basic requirements: protein, dairy, vegetable, and carbohydrate. Okay, it could use some more vegetable. Jetties really needs to offer hot peppers.

The pastrami sandwich also tasted very good, and offers a similarly food group balance. I enjoyed the pastrami itself. I don’t want to start a discussion about pastrami. It’s one of those topics like politics, religion, and Meghan Markle Saxe-Coburg, that inspire strong feelings and turn Thanksgiving dinners into screaming matches. I defer to your views on pastrami, whatever they are. I’ll simply say that to someone who hadn’t tasted any pastrami at all in well over a year, it tasted very good indeed. As you can see, like a proper pastrami, it is not exactly 100% fat free. You can take that as a bug or a feature, as we tech-savvy people like to say. The rye bread is grilled, rather than toasted, which was fine with me. The slaw is good, fresh, and very lightly dressed with an irreducible minimum of mayonnaise, and they use a good spicy brown mustard.

The new sandwiches are very good news. Nancy and I get food from Jetties fairly often. Nancy really likes one of their create-your-own salads. Her special salad has about 100 different ingredients –well, maybe 12 or 15 — and I have despaired of ever getting the combination right by myself. Nancy loves their salads, and they certainly are fresh.

The sandwiches at Jetties use fresh ingredients, too. I’ve been through their sandwiches, starting, as always, with the Italian subs. I think they had a cold one but it has disappeared. The hot one is still there, but it isn’t very good: just mortadella (very good), salami (of course), provolone (of course), and … shaved ham. Is that all there is? No spicy pepperoni or sopressata? No fontina? It sure ain’t Mangialardo’s. So I shifted to the meatball sub. I keep ordering meatball subs, but I have never once in my life bitten into a meatball sub without thinking, “I really wish this were an Italian sausage sub,” and that’s what Ive thought at Jetties while shaking crushed red pepper onto the sub.

Before the new sandwiches, my favorite has been their roast beef on pumpernickel with havarti cheese, thin red onions, tomatoes, and horseradish sour cream. That’s a good sandwich. No complaints, but I’m really happy to have two more good options.

Oh, there are two more new sandwiches: chicken with grilled onions and white American cheese on a sub roll; and a roasted turkey version of the pastrami sandwich served on sourdough.

If you live around here, you’ll probably go to Jetties. Try their new sandwiches. See if I’m not right.

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